Network services are widely deployed and used in many networks. In many cases, services are provided by chains of independent service functions that follow an ordered sequence of execution, called a service function chain. The services provide a range of functions such as security, wide area network (WAN) acceleration, firewall services, and server load balancing. Service functions that form part of the overall service may be physically located at different points in the network infrastructure, such as the wide area network, data center, campus, and so forth.